


By My Hand You Shall Know Me

by yujacheong



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Chiss (Star Wars), Falleen (Star Wars), Getting Together, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26683666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujacheong/pseuds/yujacheong
Summary: A Falleen art forger meets a certain Grand Admiral.“Every work of art says something about the artist,” pronounced Thrawn, his red eyes flashing in the bright-white glare of the studio floodlights.Kal’Aryn felt himself flushing orange beneath the heat of Thrawn’s gaze. He couldn’t disagree.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Original Art Forger, Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Remix Revival 2020





	By My Hand You Shall Know Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Self-Portrait of the Artist as an Inveterate Liar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21626119) by [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake). 



“Every work of art says something about the artist,” pronounced Thrawn, his red eyes flashing in the bright-white glare of the studio floodlights.

Kal’Aryn felt himself flushing orange beneath the heat of Thrawn’s gaze. He couldn’t disagree.

*

Kal’Aryn used to be an artist himself once. A ‘real’ one. He’d been ambitious. Terribly idealistic. He’d also come uncomfortably close to starving. And in the end, it was that last part – the ‘near-starving’ part – that had set him on the path he’d come to walk for the past couple of hundred years.

If he harbored any regrets about the direction his life had taken, he told himself they weren’t serious. Art forgery wasn’t a bad gig, after all. The work kept Kal’Aryn busy, and more to the point it kept his belly nice and full. It also conferred financial independence from his thuggish relatives, which was no small thing when one happened to be Falleen…and one’s fourth cousin twice removed happened to be Prince Xizor.

Of course, being Falleen these days came hand in glove with its own minor complications. The fall of the Republic and the rise of Palpatine’s new Empire had exacerbated humanocentric prejudice. Although Kal’Aryn was insulated from the worst effects of this – he wasn’t exactly what one might call a ‘public figure’ – state suppression of nonhuman art and artistic expression was reaching new all-time highs. Politically-minded artists were being imprisoned; invaluable works of art were being destroyed.

These unpleasant times made Kal’Aryn, who was already in the habit of jealously guarding his privacy, even more paranoid. It didn’t, however, put a stop to his career in forgery.

“Incoming comm from Elyaas,” announced the droid. “Accept or reject?”

“Accept,” said Kal’Aryn.

Far from it. If anything, in fact, his services were more in demand than ever before. The nonhuman art world hadn’t gone the way of the Republic; it’d just gone underground. And without legitimate oversight, unscrupulous dealers happy to pass a forgery off as the genuine article had proliferated. Truth be told, Kal’Aryn now had more offers of work coming in than he could reasonably take up. He’d been forced to become quite selective.

The studio comlink beeped. The line was open. “What is it today?” asked Kal’Aryn directly, without preamble.

“Gutlay erotic triptych: quarter-cut of my finder’s fee upfront, half-cut of the credit sale upon delivery. You interested?” 

“Half-cut of your finder’s fee,” countered Kal’Aryn with a sniff. It wasn’t like finding a genuine Gutlay involved any work for Elyaas. The only thing he had to do was punch the comm code to Kal’Aryn’s studio.

“You drive a hard bargain, old friend,” said Elyaas. He paused; static crackled across the comlink audio. It was an unlisted code on a pirate frequency – the cost of privacy was audio clarity. Then, with feigned reluctance: “Oh, alright.”

“Excellent. Tell me more.”

*

The thing about the new Empire’s xenophobia was that certain sorts of intimate relations between humans and nonhumans – and sexually explicit artistic depictions thereof – had been deemed immoral. If not outright illegal. So as one might expect, demand for xenophilic works of art was spiking. An enterprising art forger could turn a tidy profit, if he so wished.

And Kal’Aryn so wished. Where once he specialized in Ss’lani world-orbs, Zeltron mood-bubbles, Morvogodine puzzle-mazes, and other similar forms of heritage sculpture, now more than half of his commissions in this proverbial New Age of Empire were of a decidedly sexual nature.

As such things went, Gutlay’s erotic triptychs were relatively innocuous. They consisted of three standing panels, each depicting in bas-relief the same male human with a different female Twi’lek. The appeal was the liberal use of figural flow-clay, which meant that each sculpted scene was also animated. Value to each triptych was assigned based upon the length of each scene and its complexity, with triptychs featuring the longest scenes and the greatest varieties of copulatory positions the most coveted by discriminating Gutlay collectors.

Kal’Aryn, as a rule, never produced forgeries which diverged too far from the mean. An average – albeit quality – example in a particular artist’s style was less likely to draw unwanted attention to him than something collectors would deem extravagant or exceptionally rare.

His triptych would therefore be of the usual length and complexity. A quality example of the Gutlay oeuvre, but not outstanding. Even so, Kal’Aryn found himself deriving great enjoyment from the flow-clay shaping of the three Twi’leks and their human paramour. He’d used to enjoy fraternizing with the warm-bloods in his adventurous youth, and he’d particularly enjoyed the adventurousness and flexibility of certain male humans. Besides, because they were much less influenced by Kal’Aryn’s pheromones than their female counterparts, his association with them had felt more honest.

If the act of creation proved most pleasantly arousing, well. Kal’Aryn figured that meant his Gutlay forgery was a success.

*

It was a success…albeit not in the manner Kal’Aryn would have expected.

The buyer in question had been a low-ranking officer in the Imperial Navy with a very large collection of illegal erotica, written, pictorial, and sculptural, and inevitably he was caught. The raid on his home and his arrest, along with his subsequent trial, were quite the holonet circus.

Kal’Aryn didn’t follow the news. So he was most surprised when the Imperial Navy…or, rather, a particular Grand Admiral with a particular, vested interest in understanding relations between humans and nonhumans…managed, through various circumlocutions and complex deductions, not to mention ten additional pseudonymous commissions, to trace the Gutlay forgery back to him.

Then this Grand Admiral in question showed up at Kal’Aryn’s studio to make him an offer that he really ought of have refused.

Except that he didn’t.

*

“I’ve lived for over three hundred years,” said Kal’Aryn after they finished making love for the first time, “and yet I am wholly unfamiliar with your species. I do understand how you knew I would be receptive to your overtures.”

Thrawn’s smile was indulgent. “Hans Gutlay was a human who loved Twi’leks. His Twi’leks are extravagant and individualistic; his humans basic and iconic. Your male human was too affectionately and attentively shaped to be a genuine Gutlay.”

Kal’Aryn winced. Thrawn’s incisive art criticism was also a critique of his skills in forgery.

“On the contrary,” interjected Thrawn, reading his expression, “your erotic triptych inspired in me a desire to meet the artist. And thanks to the superb quality of its animated expression – second-to-none, truly masterful – I was assured I would be met with equal desire.”

“Superb. Second-to-none. Masterful. You flatter me,” murmured Kal’Aryn, flushing orange anew.

It was true – he and Thrawn were fantastic in bed together. The best he’d had in at least half a century. And notwithstanding the noted flaws in Kal’Aryn’s attempt at Gutlay forgery, the art criticism wasn’t bad, either.


End file.
